Specialty Theatre completes refurbishment of a historic hall

The Centenary Hall, located on the corner of Cadell and Dawson Streets in Goolwa, South Australia was built in 1930 in the latter part of the art deco period after the Mayor of Goolwa became frustrated that the town council would not build a cinema in the town. So he paid for and built the Centenary Hall. The hall stopped operating as a cinema in the 1960s.

The Hall is now owned and operated by the Alexandrina Council and in 2010 the council undertook the decision to refurbish the hall as part of their application to become the 2012 Regional Centre of Culture in South Australia. To achieve this, the venue needed to become a modern 21st Century performance space with a state-of-the-art lighting, sound and staging system.

Specialty Theatre and Specialty Audio Visual were engaged to install the stage and blackout drapes, performance audio system, theatre communications system and video monitoring system. The project completed in early 2012 and the venue now serves as a state-of-the-art performance space.

“We were proud to be selected to undertake the refurbishment and fit-out of this historic theatre and cinema venue” said Jim Dodd, Theatre Sales Executive at Specialty Theatre.

“Since the project required expertise in both live theatre and cinema development as well as historic venue restoration, it suited our organisation’s skill sets perfectly” said Brian Ross, General Manager, Specialty Group.

Specialty Theatre also manufactured and installed a complete set of stage drapes as well as motorized blackout drapes for the side windows. The front of house curtain and soft proscenium were manufactured from plush, theatrical velvet with leg, border and tab curtains in heavy duty wool serge theatre fabric. The filled cloth cyclorama or “cyc” at rear of stage provides for dual sided lighting effects as well as a seamless projection surface when required.

The hall’s flexibility is further enhanced by installation of Specialty Group’s unique STS010 Rotary Leg Unit which provides 360 degree positioning of the leg curtains, allowing for traditional side of stage access for theatre productions, as well as solid wall, black box configuration for recital modes.

Significantly for Specialty Group was the installation of the new STS140 Lighting Bar which features robust, all-steel construction making it extremely strong yet reasonably priced. The light bar was deployed using CCT Lighting stage lighting fixtures.

This project was also one of Specialty’s first installations of professional audio equipment manufactured by Tannoy, one of the oldest and most prestigious audio brands in the world.

Specialty Group supplies an extensive range of theatre equipment, stage curtains, and stage rigging equipment for almost any stage or theatre requirement.